Taeler Hendrix

Wrestling Cares Association will be presenting their second women’s tournament this coming January. The promotion will be collaborating with Alternative Wrestling Show for the “Race For the Ring 2: California Gold Rush,” as next year’s tournament will feature eight tag teams from the AWS roster. The two-day tournaments will be kicking off at the American Legion Posts in South Gate, California on January 23rd, as the first rounds will be worked through-the semifinals and finals will be held the following day, January 24th.

Katarina Leigh won this past year’s tournament; she defeated Candice LeRae in the first round of the “Beat the Champ Series” after submitting her to a Boston Crab to gain the final fall, besting LeRae two-to-one. Her next opponents scored the first pinfall in their match, Taeler Hendrix and Tracy Taylor gained the upper-hand on Leigh immediately into the contest, all for the match’s momentum to shift in Leigh’s momentum favor, becoming more aggressive throughout the rounds. On January 18th of this year, Leigh faced off against Cheerleader Melissa in the finals of the tournament. She and Melissa fought to sudden death- by the two-minute mark; both competitors tied with three wins apiece. Leigh reversed Melissa’s Air Raid Crash into a sunset flip to end the match. Leigh’s hand was raised-making her first Ladies Beat the Champ Series Champion.

As opposed to five women competing in the previous tournament, this time around twelve women will be vying for the championship ring, which will be presented to the winner. The first eleven competitors announced for the tournament are; Hania, Nicole Savoy, Datura, former AWS Women’s Champion Christina Von Eerie, Savana Riley, Kahmora, Marriah Moreno and regulars of AWS in Kikyo Nakamura,

Raze, Brittany Wonder and Sage Sin, the final competitor to be announced. Wrestling Cares Association has a scoring system implemented for their tournaments. Matches will be under a ten-minute time limit, as competitors will be fighting to collect the most points. Every win through pinfall, submission or count-out will be one point. If competitors are tied while the time limit expires, additional three-minutes will be added. If there is no winner at the end of the three minutes, both competitors will be eliminated from the tournament.

Full disclosure – we’re fans of Taeler Hendrix here at Ringbelles, so we were pretty disappointed when she went somewhat quiet for a while following our Women Of Wrestling Podcast with her 11 months ago. Sure, she was competing for places like Xtreme Intense Championship Wrestling, Queens Of Combat and Classic Championship Wrestling but her profile was being kept somewhat low. However, the 25-year old has emerged again over the summer with a new look and style to help evolve her character.

We’re happy to see Hendrix flourishing again after a disappointing TNA run and her departure from Ohio Valley Wrestling seeing her under the radar for a while, but it seems that the time away has been worth it, as she has a fresh heel persona – though we can’t ignore how well she works as a babyface too. That’s why we’ve posted a match between she and Alexxis Nevaeh from Lucky Pro Wrestling‘s June 20 show in Hudson, MA. Have a watch, and get reacquainted with the One Girl Revolution.

Without a doubt in my mind, the person who left the biggest impression with me was Tessa. This was a women I knew almost nothing about. I’ve seen a little of her work on YouTube, but nothing to really inform an opinion about. From the moment she came through the curtain at GNO 13, she just radiated “STAR”. Not only is she incredibly good looking, but she has a ton of charisma. She plays the part of a Blanchard. She knows who she is and will tell everyone about it. She interacted with the crowd, including me, in a way that I rarely see. She hasn’t been wrestling long, but she’s already got more presence than most of the GNO roster. No one else on this show even came close as to be hated like she was. I would be absolutely shocked if she isn’t in WWE sometime soon. And on top of it all, she’s very competent in the ring. She didn’t look like a rookie at all in her matches. Just a complete package. One last note, her theme song is remix of the 4 Horsemen theme and it’s my new favorite theme in wrestling. It’s perfect.

2) Heidi Lovelace.

Heidi continues to grow to the point where she is no longer the scrappy underdog getting beat down for long portions of her matches. Her match with Mia Yim in my mind, surpassed all others on both GNO 13 and 14. Not only is her in ring work on the level of a Mia Yim, Athena, etc, but her heel work in AIW has really been top notch. She’s wildly entertaining in this role. It’s not going to be much longer until we see her with more championship gold around her waist.

3) Taeler Hendrix.

Taeler’s work in previous GNO events has never really wowed me. Her work was always fine, but something was missing. That has changed at these shows. She now has a more dominant heel role and plays to her opponent and crowd much more. It makes her matches very entertaining and fun. She’s also tweeked her look to a more seductive/darker look and I think its a big improvement from the flashy neon outfits she was known for. Solid stuff from her tonight and I’d say she has gone from an afterthought to someone I really look forward to seeing on these shows.

4) Chasity Taylor.

I am gonna be honest here. I’ve seen a few matches from Chasity in person before these GNO shows and they were generally pretty bad. While she looks fantastic and has a ton of energy, her work left a lot to be desired. She’s still new and I imagine most people don’t grasp wrestling that quickly, but I was worried I’d see some of that here. This was thankfully not the case. She has improved leaps and bounds since I saw her a few months ago. She seems more sure of herself and poised in the ring. She surprised me by winning her first match vs Angeldust, and then having a really stellar outing vs Tessa Blanchard. I think somewhere along the line, something inside her has “clicked” and now she improving greatly from her experiences. She is a great babyface with a lot of fire and a million dollar smile. I also enjoyed her choice of theme song, Guns N Roses’s “Sweet Child of Mine”.

5) Veda Scott.

Last, but not least, I just want to touch on Veda Scott here. I think her match vs Athena in the main event of GNO 14 was the finest in-ring work I’ve ever seen out of Veda. While, I have always been a huge supporter of her due to her fantastic promo ability and character work, far too often her in-ring skills have been a little lacking. Both her matches during this taping had purpose and real fire with them. She was a perfect first opponent for Tessa Blachard as Tessa reminded me a lot of Veda’s old heel character in AIW. Veda even comments on this fact during the match. Her work in the main event vs Athena for the AIW Women’s championship was so good, it got the crowd almost completely behind her. The crowd wanted Veda to win the title. They were begging for her to win the title. When Athena won the match, there was a noticable letdown by the crowd. Veda busted her ass in the main event. More than even in her matches vs Allysin Kay and Greg Iron. While this match didn’t have the spectacle of her diving off a cage, it told a wonderful story of her fight for respect. No one on the AIW roster IMO deserve to hold the Women’s title more than her. She’s been on more shows than any other female. She has legit connection with the AIW crowd. Her day will come. And I hope its soon.

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Overall, these were the best GNO shows I can remember. Everyone performed on this show and performed well. I could go on and on about the other women like Mary Elizabeth Monroe, Jasmin, Alexxia Nicole, etc, but it’s all can be summed up in two words. Hard work. There were no forgettable matches. Nothing I’d want to skip when rewatching them. If this was it for the GNO brand, and Turner’s Hall as a wrestling venue, I think they went out with a bang. I implore you support AIW. Support Girls Night Out. Support Women’s wrestling. Some of these girls actually lost money wrestling on these shows due to travel costs, but wrestled anyway because they love it. I don’t think anyone should want to see passion like that end.

Thanks for joining us for our results coverage of Absolute Intense Wrestling‘s Girls Night Out 13 & 14. The shows come at what seems like an uncertain time for the Cleveland based group, whose promoter John Thorne announced yesterday that these shows look likely to be the final events at Turner’s Hall, AIW’s home venue. The promotion admits that finding a new home “could be difficult”, but that “overcoming fucked up situations is what @aiwrestling does best”. We are, as usual, indebted to Ringbelles correspondent Dave Muscarella for delivering results live.

Turnout reportedly around 40 for the early show, rising slightly to around 50 for the evening show, and described as “small but lively”. On the talent side of things, both Thunderkitty and KC Cassidy are no-shows. TK cancelled last night, citing personal issues, and KC had flight problems, making it impossible for her to reach Cleveland in time.

A year on from the show where she broke her collarbone – well, pre-show to be exact – Courtney Rush picked up MVP honours as part of a successful night for she and her Team Canada members at the 2014 Smash Wrestling CanUSA Classic. In a turnaround from last year’s result, the hosts picked up the team victory, but also saw division following the presentation of the medals.

Vanessa Kraven – who defeated Rush on Smash’s September 13 show and also beat Allysin Kay on last night’s event – attacked the MVP and left the ring to the confusion of her compatriots and the fans, though the reasoning will likely come out in due course. A possible claim could be that she deserved the MVP honour because of her win over Courtney and getting a win over Kay while Rush took two bites of the cherry (pun intended) to get a victory for her country, but we’ll see.

When we spoke to Xandra Bale last month she promised that this year’s CanUSA Classic would be bigger than last year’s event, and she was right – the number of participants swelled from 10 to 14, and also saw storylines both interwoven into the card and coming off the back of it. Reports from the fans in attendance were calling it a great show by the time intermission came around, so it may be worth seeking this show out when it is released.

We’re big advocates for Heidi Lovelace here at Ringbelles – so a year and a bit after we had one of her first ever wrestling interviews on an edition of Fight Like A Girl, we thought it was time to welcome her back and feature her on the main Women of Wrestling Podcast – and why not? She’s done so much in the last year or so that she’s got a lot to talk about. Amongst the topics discussed in this 90 minute show include winning the AAW Heritage Title last Friday night in Chicago (her career highlight to date), a breakdown of the great months-long storyline she was involved with in Ohio Valley Wrestling last Summer with Taeler Hendrix, becoming a player in SHIMMER this year, ushering in the return of CHIKARA, making sense of intergender wrestling, wrestling for AIW, working heel, being one half of The Buddy System with Solo Darling at SHINE, and yes, squirm-inducing tales from the IWA: Mid South Queen of the Death Matches show this year… not to mention the reason *why* she wanted to do a Death Match tournament in the first place (and whether you’ll see her in any more). There’s talk also of future plans, and this episode’s Wacky Roadtrip Story involves crotch chopping and veiled threats to kill. Yes. Take a listen!

With SHINE 20 just a day away, we caught up with one half of the Kimber Bombs – none other than Cherry Bomb – on the eve of the night she’s certain they’ll become SHINE Tag Champions. Order the show here. We discuss her recent ankle injury suffered at SMASH wrestling and get an update on how it’s holding up after getting back in the ring last weekend. From there, we discuss – nay, *enthuse* about the tag team of The Kimber Bombs, how they came together, their name, their chemistry in the ring… oh, and ‘Hello Kitty’ cookies. We also find out what happened to the proposed Taeler Hendrix/Cherry Bomb tag team that was first mooted by Taeler on our show last November. We also touch on Cherry’s career ambitions to make it to the top, and the chances she had to work a TNA taping and a couple of ROH TV tapings last year. Amongst other things, there are mentions of CZW, WSU, the upcoming SMASH CanUSA Classic (where she’s defected to Team USA by way of marriage), whether marriage has changed her experiences in wrestling, her upcoming bikini fitness competition and a couple of wacky road trip stories. And before Cherry even gets on the show, we’ve got 20 minutes or so of chat about this coming weekend’s worth of female wrestling shows, the final goodbye to Vickie Guerrero on Raw and the upcoming Paige/Naomi match this weekend. Check it out!